In your head

Ray Tallis discusses the "insuperable problem" of explaining how intracranial nerve impulses can be "about" extracranial objects, but thinking in these terms rather confuses the issue (9 January, p 28).

Our experiences are not "about" extracranial things any more than your experience of your hand is about the appendage on the end of your wrist. As amputees experiencing phantom limbs know all too well, the pattern of experiences you call your hand is located within your brain. The sensation of pain in your hand is actually an addition to the many other experiences that are generated by the same region of your brain.

We only think of the hand as a part of a body operating in an external world because our brains have evolved to consistently encode data from that part of our body in that part of our experience.

The "aboutness" connection is indeed mysterious but it ...

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